Quitathon update for Sunday

I decided to forge ahead with the nine-patch quilt today. Ultimately, I chose to layer each half of the quilt without borders. My logic is that I can always add the borders on to each half later if I should decide it might work out better. But, once I cut my long border strips in half, I am stuck with pieced borders.
Quilting will have to wait for another day, but I am sandwhiched and ready to go! :)

Same quilt, now with fabric!

This weekend is another quilt-a-thon hosted by Judy L and I am trying to get a little something accomplished. So far, I have my blocks stitched together from the quilt I have been blogging about for the last couple posts. I think I am going to try to quilt it in two pieces and then join the pieces together, because I don't have my Handi-quilter frame set up right now. (My tables for the frame are in use by others right now.) This is what it looks like at this point.

The border is not attached, just pinned on the design wall for effect. I can't decide if I want to add the narrow inner border or not. Right now it is missing mostly because my design wall is not large enough to accommodate another border. But I'm not sure it is really needed anyways.

But my real dilemma is this- I don't know if I should quilt the two halves before adding the borders or if I should add the borders to each half and quilt them before joining the two halves of the quilt together. If I add them first, they will have a seam through them. If I add them last they won't, but I will need to manipulate the entire quilt through my sewing machine to do the borders. Does anyone have any experience with quilting in pieces? I would love some helpful tips from someone who has done this before.

Edit: I just noticed that I have a mistake in my quilt top. Do you see it? One of my alternate blocks is turned the wrong direction. Oops! Funny, but I didn't notice it before. I guess I will need to make a little adjustment. I sure am glad I found it before I started quilting.

Which one?

After giving it some thought, I went back and played a little more with my nine-patch designs some more. I thought maybe it would look better if I swapped out the placement of the rows. Here is the way I last posted this quilt design.

And this is after I switched it around. This way makes the light blue grid look complete. Which is better?

Anxious to see the son

My computer has been acting up for the last several weeks. I am so frustrated I often feel like throwing it againt the wall. Sometimes it will start up and run fine. But more often than not, it will decide not to run some of my programs. This includes (but is not limited to) my browsers and e-mail programs, effectively cutting me off from my favorite computer activites. Sigh.



I have been trying to resolve this problem, but so far without success. The good news is, my computer wiz son will be coming home from college for the summer in a week. I am hopeful that he will be able to figure out what is wrong. My fear is that I will need to completely reinstall everything. I have been frantically searching for installation cd's for all of my programs just in case. A couple vital ones seem to have disappeared including my anti-virus program and Microsoft Office. Have I mentioned how frustrated I am? Hurry home, Kyle. I need your help!



I haven't had time to do much quilting lately. Friday was strip club again at my local quilt shop. I spent the time putting the blocks together from last month's quilt. I just can't decide if I want to add borders to it or leave it as is. No new picture, as it looks pretty much like it did here, just sewn together.



I have been playing a little bit with my EQ software, since it will still usually load up. I have a bunch of nine patch blocks that I want to put into a quilt. The blocks are all different colors-very scrappy. I will share a few of the settings I have played with since I have no other nice quilty pics to share.

This one is just a grid like design. I like how the blocks are sort of framed in or linked togther.

This is the same layout with a different look. With this one, I just played with the color placement of the alternate blocks to create the diagonal stripes.

And with this one I went in a totally different direction. I grouped the nine patched differently and changed the alternate block. I don't know which one I like best.

Tourist season?

We have had a couple unexpected guests around here for the the past week or so. They are neither invited nor welcome as far as my husband is concerned. I have found them to be quite entertaining. They seem to have quite a fondness for our family swimming pool.

I think they may be lost. Sure hope they move on soon.

Time to check in

This may be my final check in for the quiltathon this weekend. I didn't get as much accomplished as I would have liked, but it sure felt good to do a bit of sewing. But, I am feeling a bit tired, so I think I am hanging it up for the day.

There were a few distractions along the way.

My daughter dropped by both days to work on her wedding invitations. Can't get upset about that- they should have been in the mail a couple weeks ago.

She did sort of take over my sewing space in the process. But, in her defense, I do have my own sewing room. And I chose to sew at the dining room table instead.

Still, I managed to complete all of the blocks I need for the quilt. Aren't they pretty?

Here's a better view of them in all their glory on my design wall. I like how this one is shaping up.

But I think I will wait to stitch them together. This one is going to take a lot of concentration getting all the blocks facing the correct direction. Plus there will be about a million seams to match up. Yuck!

Perhaps I will practice first with these extra blocks. I think this could be a cute little topper.

And hey, did you notice my new ironing board cover? I stole the idea from Lisa Boyer at Dorky Homemade Quilts. She posted hers a while back and I had been itching to cover mine ever since.